Many companies package items and/or groups of items together for a variety of purposes, such as e-commerce and mail-order companies that package items (e.g., books, CDs, apparel, food, etc.) to be shipped to fulfill orders from customers. Retailers, wholesalers, and other product distributors (which may collectively be referred to as distributors) typically maintain an inventory of various items that may be ordered by clients or customers. This inventory may be maintained and processed at a materials handling facility which may include, but is not limited to, one or more of: warehouses, distribution centers, cross-docking facilities, order fulfillment facilities, packaging facilities, shipping facilities, or other facilities or combinations of facilities for performing one or more functions of material (inventory) handling.
To deliver these products to the customer, the operators of the materials handling facilities often coordinate with one or more carriers (e.g., Federal Express®, U.S. Post Office™, DHL®, UPS®) to retrieve the ordered items from the materials handling facility and transport them to the customers. The carriers often schedule departure times identifying when each truck or other transportation unit will depart the materials handling facility. To ensure that the ordered items are ready to be loaded into the truck or other transportation unit prior to the scheduled departure time, schedules may be set that indicate deadlines by which the items must be retrieved or “picked” from inventory and packed in preparation for shipment. A specified time by which an item must be picked from inventory may be referred to in some instances as a critical pull time (“CPT”). Occasionally, an “exception” may occur in the normal picking or later processing (e.g., an item may be missing at a location from where it was supposed to be picked), which can disrupt the schedule or otherwise result in a missed ship date for the item if the problem is not otherwise addressed.
While implementations are described herein by way of example, those skilled in the art will recognize that the implementations are not limited to the examples or drawings described. It should be understood that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit implementations to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.